Nasty 'Anti-Vax' Statements About the MMR Vaccine

But, the source may surprise you

If anyone, including immunologists specializing in the sub-discipline of vaccinology, said anything of concern about the COVID-19 vaccine narrative, they were immediately labeled an ‘antivaxxer’; regardless of how much primary scientific data they used to elevate their concerns. So, I am predicting that a lot of people are going to be tempted to throw around the ‘antivax’ label after they see the facts that I am about to disclose…

Preamble

The ‘MMR’ vaccine targets Measles, Mumps, and Rubella. Where I live, in the province of Ontario in the country of Canada, we use what is known as a live MMR vaccine, meaning that the viruses have the potential to replicate to some degree following administration. It is part of the routine childhood vaccination schedule. It used to be given at twelve months of age, with a second dose administered at eighteen months of age. Now it is given at twelve months of age, with the second one delayed until age 4-6 along with a fourth virus added to it (to target chickenpox).

The MMR Vaccine Causes Side-Effects in 1 in 168 Children and This Translates Into Increased Burdens on Emergency Rooms

“Post market surveillance has identified an incidence of febrile seizures following the MMR vaccine of 25 to 34 per 100 000 vaccinated and a two to three-fold increased relative risk”.

I know this isn’t something that should be publicly stated without expecting vicious push-back, but “at a population level, mass exposures to a vaccine with a rare side effect profile could have detectable important population level effects“. Yes, you read that correctly. Even rare side-effects can induce measurable population-level burdens on the health care system if a vaccine is given to a large enough number of people. This is a fact that people pushing the ‘rarity’ of side-effects do not like to hear.

“We identified an increase in events occurring between 4 and 12 days post vaccination for the 12 month and, to a lesser extent and for a shorter time period for the 18 month vaccines“.

“The majority of these events represented ER [emergency room!] visits and at their peak, on day 9 following the 12 month vaccine, were approximately twice the baseline rate“.

“Overall the increase in event rate following the 12 month vaccines accounted for approximately 598 extra children experiencing one or more ER visits during the risk interval per 100,000 vaccinations.“

“The conditions for which there were the largest increase in risk for presentation to the emergency room during the risk interval compared to the control interval following the 12 month vaccine were febrile convulsions [seizures caused by high fever], fever and viral exanthema [widespread rash caused by viruses in the vaccine]“

“There were 20 additional febrile seizures for every 100,000 children vaccinated at 12 months.“

“the population wide impact of this effect… these events are resulting in an increase in health services utilization. The estimated 595 additional children experiencing at least one event for every 100 000 vaccinated translates into approximately one child experiencing at least one event per 168 children vaccinated.“

Can you believe it?!? The MMR vaccine causes side-effects in children that significantly increases the burden on public health care! It causes children to take up time and space in emergency rooms.

Let the ‘Antivax” Rage Commence

Concerns of this nature were not tolerated in the context of COVID-19 vaccines. In fact, anyone perceived in any way whatsoever to increase the burden on our public health care system was to be hated, as clearly stated by our prime minister, the Toronto Star, and way too many other people. So why should these same people tolerate this for historical vaccines? Rhetoric of this nature should certainly not be tolerated within the scientific and medical communities [read with sarcasm]. And definitely not in democracies that claim to enshrine academic freedom and freedom of speech [sarcastic]. Babies that received MMR vaccines during the COVID crisis were ‘occupying space’ in emergency rooms that could have been used by the highly anticipated (based on flawed mathematical modeling) massive flood of COVID-19 ‘cases’ (which were accurately identified on rarely using proper clinical diagnostic critera), so why wasn’t MMR vaccination paused to free up this space [sarcasm]?

So, let the haters begin their rage. How dare anyone question the sanctity of the ‘safe and effective’ narrative of the hallowed MMR vaccine in any way whatsoever?!?

But first, a very important note. YOU CAN NOT TAKE YOUR ANGER OUT ON ME !!!!!

I did not make any of the claims stated above. You might be surprised to know that every quotation was taken from a peer-reviewed scientific paper published in the rock-solid science journal PLoS One prior to the massive politicization of science and medicine.

Even more notable, authors of this study have been intense supporters of the COVID-19 vaccine narrative and have repeatedly fought back against criticisms, including those coming from genuine subject matter experts, including in the context of court cases. One of the authors is Chair of Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization, and multiple authors failed to engage in open discussions of criticisms of COVID-19 shots.

This paper also included authors from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, the home of Ontario’s infamous COVID-19 Science Table, and the University of Ottawa.

Here is the paper with every quotation that I cited highlighted in yellow…

Mmr Vax Adverse Events

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One Easy Way the Harm Could Have Been Hidden

The authors of the paper made this summary…

“the 12 month vaccines which typically contain the first dose of the MMR vaccine is associated with an increased risk of an emergency room visit approximately 4 to 12 days after immunization, peaking between days 8 and 11“

Interestingly, they could have hidden the harm altogether had they simply defined a ‘vaccinated’ child as being 14 or more days beyond receipt of the shot; and anything less than that designated as ‘unvaccinated’. But, nobody would ever try a stunt like that, would they?!? That would be egregious. Oh wait, that is exactly what was done with the COVID-19 shots.

Vaccine Safety Studies Typically Underestimate Harms

“There are important limitations of this study. The first is that, as mentioned, the healthy vacinee effect may have masked an association in the immediate post-vaccination period“. In other words, harms may have been underestimated.

“the codes we used for identifying the reasons for presentation to the emergency room have not been validated. However, we would expect that the diagnoses of febrile convulsion to have a low misclassification error and has previously been validated as a useful ER code in a separate dataset“. In other words, harms may have been underestimated.

“We also did not look for increases in visits to physician offices that did not result in presentation to the emergency room or admission and cannot comment on the impact of immunization on that outcome“. In other words, harms were likely underestimated. If children were being admitted to emergency rooms following receipt of the MMR vaccine, it is likely that many other children would have been taken to see their physician, which would represent another burden on the health care system.

Note that “children who died during the follow-up period were excluded from the… analysis”. So, if the MMR vaccine caused any deaths, that could not be captured in the data sets.

This highlights a key point about vaccine safety studies using post-marketing surveillance data: most of them underestimate harms. The only question is to what degree has the harm been underestimated?

Afterthoughts

Personally, I think this paper represents an excellent piece of science. It is very bold to state that side-effects of a vaccine can demonstrably burden the public health care system by increasing emergency room visits, but the data to support it are strong and may even underestimate the harm.

As a vaccinologist I have no problem with people highlighting issues with vaccines. I do not feel in any way tempted to label the authors as ‘antivaxxers’. The authors were simply scientists who, much earlier in their careers, were objectively raising legitimate concerns to facilitate discussion and to potentiate the development of more ideal vaccines; the ones that the Government of Canada define as being able to prevent disease for the lifetime of an individual following a single dose administered at birth, while being truly ‘safe and effective’. This kind of transparency about the harms of vaccines should have been promoted over time, not rigorously discouraged. Sadly, some of the former promoters of this transparency have become abolishers.

Many of the authors of the paper presented here have statements about COVID-19 vaccines on the public record that are highly contestable based on primary scientific evidence and ever-emerging information coming from public disclosures of previously hidden data and communiques. They should be ashamed that they did not openly encourage the kinds of scientific discourse that they enjoyed to prior to the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially considering some of their positions of privilege.

Would the authors be so ready and/or able to publish a paper like this today?

To those pushing the ‘antivax’ rhetoric, you might want to investigate the historical messaging of some of your ‘heroes’. It is surprisingly nuanced compared to the current politically correct standard.